Here's How Clark Should Be Used At The Convention

[Tom Rinaldo]

First let me start by saying Wes Clark should be given a prominent opportunity to speak. As I write it seems unclear that that will in fact happen.

Our ticket seems to have made a conscious choice not to emphasize that faulty intelligence led many in Congress to cast positive votes on the IWR that they might otherwise not have made. John Edwards on CNN (I saw the interview this AM) just stood by his IWR vote, saying it was correct to give authorization to the President, and that the world is safer without Hussein, although Edwards of course blasted Bush for how he subsequently managed the situation.

That is not my position, but we can work with it. Clark during the campaign, up until now, has repeatedly emphasized how it was a strategic blunder for the U.S. to move our priority off of Afghanistan onto Iraq before fully vanquishing the Taliban and Al Quada's infra-structure there (with the follow up position that we never should have invaded Iraq period unless it could be shown that they posed an imminent threat to the U.S.). Clark is right. So how do we reconcile these positions with that of our ticket? Strategy and timing.

It can (and of course has) been argued that Bush needed the IWR vote to provide credible leverage that the President could use to force the U.N. and our Allies to apply pressure on Iraq to comply with U.N. resolutions. That essentially was Kerry's position in voting yes on IWR. So what Clark can do now, like no one else in the Democratic Party, is explain exactly how Bush blew it AFTER that vote. An Administration that was not blinded by an ideological imperative to invade Iraq at the earliest opportunity (one that would look a lot like the kind that Kerry will form) might have used a Congressional IWR vote to pressure the U.N., but it would have drawn up a completely different timeline for action. Our State Department probably accurately foresaw that the U.N. would sit up and take notice once the U.S. started acting tough, and that in turn was bound to lead to the reintroduction of inspectors into Iraq. That is where A Kerry Administration would have parted ways with the Bush Administration.

The U.N. was not ready to act by the Spring window that preceded the suffocating heat of Iraq's Summer. Not a problem. U.N. inspectors had Hussein pinned down. If Hussein had WMD's, he couldn't deploy them (of course now we know that he didn't). In a worst case (since War is always a worst case), the U.S. could have allowed another 6 months of inspections and diplomacy before making that fateful decision to invade EVEN IF Hussein actually DID have WMD.

What the United States could have done with that six months is an excellent question to ask. For one thing, we could have gotten the job done right in Afghanistan, and sent in the troops needed to catch Bin Ladin. For a second thing, the U.S. could have acted in good faith with our Allies and the World community, and built a real coalition willing to share the costs in soldiers and money for an invasion of Iraq and the subsequent rebuilding of Iraq had War actually been necessary. For a third thing, we would have had time to secure Turkey's cooperation for a second Northern front. For a fourth thing, we would have had time to build up adequate stocks of equipment to properly equip our troops the first time with armored Humvees and bullet proof vests. For a fifth thing, we could have done the job right planning for a post invasion scenario in Iraq. And the kicker of course, is we NEVER would have needed to go in at all if Hussein had seen the whole world unite against him, which would have made it much more likely he would have cooperated fully with inspections, and that would have been that SINCE THERE WERE NO WMD's TO BEGIN WITH.

Wes Clark can and should explain this to the American Public. He is the man to do it. He knows all the details inside and out. He knows War, he knows diplomacy, he knows our Allies. He's been there and done that. We don't need at this point to relive the debates over the IWR. We can prove how Bush blew it. Clark can rattle off all of the poor decisions made in haste to deal with post invasion Iraq. He can explain exactly how decisions made by Rumsfeld have stressed out our Armed Forces and Reserves to the near breaking point. Kerry should have Clark make that case, and he should do it at the Convention.